What's The Best Value Laptop For Editing/Previewing?

[infiltrator_2k 29]

I work away in the week and at weekends family life demands a lot of my time. I've been learning scripting from reading Mikie's Guide, but I've found that being unable to go through the guide practicable I'm not able retain the information as well as I should. I've looked at laptops and a gaming laptop is ridiculously expensive, and its performance is as equally as bad. I've managed to install Arma III on an old Toshiba T130 Satellite but its performance is unplayable with a mere glitching 1-4FSP with everything turned down/off.

I'm not an expert but playing Arma on a laptop just isn't practicable as it's mega money for inferior performance to its PC counterpart. Saying that, what laptop would I need to edit and preview my scripts? Obviously a dedicated GFX card will be a must, but what GFX card, CPU and memory will make the game playable to preview mission edits and its scripts?

I've looked at an Asus laptop with a GT 740M card in, but its performance is pathetic when you consider you're paying close to £600 for the laptop :/ As that kind of money isn't even going to get me close to a gaming laptop I'm wondering what's the best bang I'm going to get for my money when it comes to buying a laptop to run Arma on.

Cheers

Ian

[mikie boy 18]

http://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/medionshop-uk?fol=9ba32f6089addfdb1918ed7dc1968700e18f5b0949df6b0e19a036baf3904003&pwid=medionshop-uk

both my brother and i picked up an awesome laptop for 500 bucks - worth a £1000- plays arma on that as good as my home pc

you wont beat the price as we looked every where

failing that the cheapest you can do is get an amd A10 with anything better than 6640graphics card - you will be able to play it at min settings

[Grumpy Old Man 3546]

Knowing that Arma3 is on the CPU heavy side, I'd say buy the notebook with the most potent CPU for your money can buy, won't be much on the market for £600 but if you only want to use it for editing/previewing and only playtesting your missions/scripts the gpu will be not as important.

[infiltrator_2k 29]

http://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/medionshop-uk?fol=9ba32f6089addfdb1918ed7dc1968700e18f5b0949df6b0e19a036baf3904003&pwid=medionshop-uk

both my brother and i picked up an awesome laptop for 500 bucks - worth a £1000- plays arma on that as good as my home pc

you wont beat the price as we looked every where

failing that the cheapest you can do is get an amd A10 with anything better than 6640graphics card - you will be able to play it at min settings

Not too sure about that Medion UK Ebayer Mikie. You may have had a good deal but there doesn't seem much up for grabs from them now and their feedback isn't too clever either. The Medion X6825 would be a good buy for £600'ish given its spec, although I wouldn't pay anymore.

[mikie boy 18]

i had no problem with them or my brother - brand new as well

you have to be patient and bid on them accordingly - think my brother had to bid three times but got one in the end - only way your gona get a good laptop - anything close to what i had was over £850 -

Customer service with them was really good i found

[fusion13 11]

Knowing what I know about computers I would go with:

1: ASUS X550, i5 4200, GT 740M

2: ASUS R510DP-FH11, AMD A10-5750M, 8670

3: ASUS Q550LF-BBI7T07, Intel Core i7 4500U, GeForce GT 745M

If I were you honestly I made a 500$ gaming pc (tower) and it would stomp on these laptops :/

Edited March 26, 2014 by Fusion13

[infiltrator_2k 29]

i had no problem with them or my brother - brand new as well

you have to be patient and bid on them accordingly - think my brother had to bid three times but got one in the end - only way your gona get a good laptop - anything close to what i had was over £850 -

Customer service with them was really good i found

I bidded £626 on a X6825 tonight but was outbid at the final 10 seconds. It sold for £647 at the end.

Knowing what I know about computers I would go with:

1: ASUS X550, i5 4200, GT 740M

2: ASUS R510DP-FH11, AMD A10-5750M, 8670

3: ASUS Q550LF-BBI7T07, Intel Core i7 4500U, GeForce GT 745M

If I were you honestly I made a 500$ gaming pc (tower) and it would stomp on these laptops :/

I built the rig that I have in my sig back in June 2009 and it's still strong. I only want the laptop to create, script and edit missions whilst working away.

[IndeedPete 1038]

As you seem to have access to Medion devices (which is AFAIK a brand of Aldi, primary a German grocery chain), I could recommend one of those. I bought a new Akoya P7816 (MD98421) for around 530€ at the official Medion shop on eBay eight months ago. It comes with an Intel Core i5-3210M, 8GB RAM and an nVidia GT645M. Surely, this is not high-end-fancy-gaming-HD-ultra-class but it is capable of running Arma 3 in "Standard" settings with 1600m view distance and enough FPS to edit and play scenarios or the campaign. I was actually surprised by the power of this relatively cheap machine as Arma 3 seems to run smoother than Arma 2. Anyway, I'm satisfied with it and managed to develop a lot of stuff on that thing during the last five months.

[infiltrator_2k 29]

As you seem to have access to Medion devices (which is AFAIK a brand of Aldi, primary a German grocery chain), I could recommend one of those. I bought a new Akoya P7816 (MD98421) for around 530€ at the official Medion shop on eBay eight months ago. It comes with an Intel Core i5-3210M, 8GB RAM and an nVidia GT645M. Surely, this is not high-end-fancy-gaming-HD-ultra-class but it is capable of running Arma 3 in "Standard" settings with 1600m view distance and enough FPS to edit and play scenarios or the campaign. I was actually surprised by the power of this relatively cheap machine as Arma 3 seems to run smoother than Arma 2. Anyway, I'm satisfied with it and managed to develop a lot of stuff on that thing during the last five months.

Definitely. But what people need to understand is the naming process of a GFX card can be very deceiving. Take the GT 740M for example... you'd think it would be more powerful than the GT 680M. However, it is anything but. People who want to know how well a card will perform should check out the card's benchmark scoring. Medion laptops as far as I can see pack a lot of power per buck. The only thing they lack is the superior build quality when compared to its rivals Alienware and ROG. But if you're on a budget aesthetically pleasing is a luxury and a good trade for performance.

I guess another option is to try to find a well spec'd laptop with no OS if you already have an old unused Windows 7 licence knocking around which I have. Not sure if you'd save that much though :/ I was looking down the refurbished route too. Although I've been stung before. However, if it's a manufacturer refurbishment that comes with a manufacturer's warranty it might be an option. With my years of dealings with Ebay I've found there are some right unscrupulous sellers on there who sell junk who prey on buyer's who don't scrutinise the item's description so you need to have your wits about you.

[IndeedPete 1038]

Medion laptops as far as I can see pack a lot of power per buck. The only thing they lack is the superior build quality when compared to its rivals Alienware and ROG. But if you're on a budget aesthetically pleasing is a luxury and a good trade for performance.

True, it comes with a BIOS cut down to the basics and customizing / changing hardware is not easy / possible. But I didn't want to do that anyway as I have my "gaming rig" at home. I just needed a laptop for the last months I spent abroad and on boring, rainy days I wanted to have something that's powerful enough for playing at least older games in medium settings.

And you're right: you might be able to find cheaper used or refurbished machines. I haven't had any problems with eBay yet, especially not with professional traders. But I'm not that much of an eBayer and maybe consumer protection laws here in Germany are different than in the UK, I don't know. Once one of my flatmates got ripped off on eBay, he went straight to the police and had his money back within a few days. That's just a lucky case because the guy on the other end was quite surprised when actual policemen knocked on his door. As to my experience, with PayPal's protection for buyers and a legitimate trader puchasing used tech shouldn't be too much of a problem.

[mikie boy 18]

like i mentioned before - you will not find a brand new device anywhere near as good as you will get from Medion. As for the build quality..its that old label issue. honestly the built quality is of a sound standard. I've been builing pcs since 1997, and ive seen some crap in my time. And as for laptops theres been some right old piles of poo even with named brands. So really and truthfully, recommendations and having a test yourself is the only way to try.

I think my brother did spend ages looking for a laptop that super seeded my Amd A8 - 6620g (which played A2 on low/med - and A3 just) - and he was overly impressed with what he got from medion.

As for the graphics cards - we got nvidia 670mtx - which runs arma 3 on full.

The Nvidia 740 will definitely play A3 - enough for testing anyway, but you need to be hitting the 760s to get a solid gaming experience.

Keep trying with those Medion ones - MEDION ERAZER X6823 Laptop MD98253 15.6" 16GB - paid £520

[Beerkan 71]

Have you considered getting lowly cheapo laptop and just VNC/RDP to your own desktop?

[infiltrator_2k 29]

Well guys, I managed to bag a Medion x6825 tonight for £625 from eBay (third time lucky). I could have bought a refurbished Asus with no OS for £469, but with its inferior 740M card and dual core i7-3537U it wouldn't have ran Arma as well as the Medion x6825. The 120GB SSD is also an added performance bonus. I use Adobe Photoshop and Premiere as well as a couple of demanding applications so the 16GB or ram will also be another added bonus :)

Cheers guys.